Good news, people: it's coming soon Very it will be easier for us to say goodbye to unwanted streaming services. In the current climate, dissatisfied users have plenty of reasons to want to cut the cord (so to speak) from their digital overlords. Perhaps the final season of your favorite show has ended and won't return for another two years that will test your patience. It's more likely that Netflix canceled a promising new series outright before it could gain an audience (like the well-received series “Kaos,” as Variety recently reported) and continues to cause major trust issues with potential viewers. And of course, among all the usual suspects, there is always a tendency to increase prices again and make the expense no longer worthwhile. Regardless of the situation, the federal government is finally stepping in to implement a long-overdue change that will benefit customers around the world.
In a move that made headlines today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced. that streaming services will no longer be able to resort to complex and, let's face it, shady methods to discourage subscribers from canceling their recurring memberships. According to a press release, the bill, informally known as the click-to-cancel rule, will force streamers to “make it as easy for consumers to cancel their registrations as they make the registration itself.” This provision was adopted by a 3-2 vote and will take effect 180 days after its publication in the Federal Register. (You won't believe it, but according to Reuters. This is actually a major victory for the Biden/Harris administration, which had previously vowed to embrace this insidious practice.) FTC Chair Lina M. Khan said in a statement:
“Too often, companies force people to jump through endless hoops to cancel their subscription. FTC regulations will put an end to these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. No one should have to pay for a service they no longer want.”
How the FTC ruling affects streaming viewers like you and me
While the Netflix, Maxes, and Prime Videos of the world are constantly chasing viewership numbers determined by vague-sounding metrics like “minutes watched,” the dirty little secret of the current streaming era is that each service simply wants as much of the total as possible. the largest number of people subscribing to his platform. While CEOs would obviously prefer to have shows like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” garner high enough ratings to justify the huge budget outlays involved, the small number of customers who passively pay for annual Prime Video subscriptions without even watching anything on the platform is also net profit. But soon, even your tech-shy parents will be juggling way too many paid subscriptions will be able to be canceled with one click of the TV remote control.
This will be a marked improvement on the current status quo. In just one example, my attempt to cancel an ongoing Max subscription resulted in a message asking, “Before you go, Jeremy, can we help you with something?” This is then followed by a (somewhat desperate-looking) prompt to select a cheaper subscription tier, after which the algorithm doesn't even pretend to help and instead displays the message “Can't find anything to watch? Check out our recently added movies and series tab for random movies and shows. When you finally get past these three puzzles, you can navigate to one of two buttons: “Return to Subscribe” or “Continue to Cancel.” But it's not over yet! Is other website with one last “special offer” in hopes of convincing me to stick around (which, in full disclosure, I'll probably take advantage of as soon as this article is published) before they finally let me do what I came here to do in the first place place. Exhaustive.
Streaming poses serious problems and there are no easy solutions to fix them, but even this relatively small step towards transparency and corporate ethics is a huge step for customers like you and me.
